It's Officially The End Of An Era For Steam Sales In 2027

Published Oct 4, 2026, 9:14 AM EDT

Jared is a writer, editor, and Communications Studies graduate who loves popular nerd culture (almost anything to do with Marvel, DC, Star Wars, or The Lord of the Rings) and the interactive storytelling medium. Jared's first console was the PS1, wherein he fell for Spider-Man, Spyro the Dragon, and Crash Bandicoot.

Steam is ubiquitously loved as a platform for PC gaming, yet it is largely packed with games that are struggling to tread water and be seen. It’s anyone’s guess whether or not you’ll stumble across a game that you might like, and, unless you know what game you’re searching for and hoping to see on sale, finding something you might enjoy in Steam’s Discounts & Events section can be like finding a needle in a haystack.

Of course, there’s an argument to be made that there’s an inherent beauty in Steam’s discovery queue, so long as users are content with picking up a game and not liking it as much as they thought they might. Fortunately for anyone who prefers to be guided toward a game or sale they might indulge in, Steam has announced that a big update is on the way.

A Big Steam Change Is Coming Your Way

As per Steam, the platform’s Discounts & Events section will soon look quite different for every user. Indeed, Steam has decided to cease its “manual calendar-based approach,” which involves scheduled placements made by “partners via Steamworks” or Steam itself, in favor of “something more dynamic and personalized for each customer.” What that looks like is undetermined.

The worry on Steam’s part seems to be that there’s a lack of visibility for countless discounted games and sales events that would otherwise be missable due to not being slotted when it is most convenient. Depending on what “something more dynamic and personalized” actually is, it’ll be interesting to see if this achieves what Steam believes it will.

Maybe how that takes shape in the future is Steam curating sales and events relevant to users’ game preferences, and promoting them in different corners of Steam that users frequent. Conversely, being bombarded with notifications of myriad discounts and seasonal sales could easily become overwhelming, especially if Steam chooses that the best way to make them visible was to toss them onto users’ Home or Library pages somehow.

In fact, sale events becoming algorithmic could take away the joy of feeling as if you’ve found an intriguing game all on your own. As Twitter/X user lucysgigglee writes, “The one thing I actually liked about Steam sales was stumbling onto random weird games in the middle of the discovery queue.” The update Steam proposes, then, would probably wash its hands clean of that whimsy and wonder.

This’ll Affect Developers Whose Games Are On Steam, Too

For now, it’s nice that users can peruse the Discounts & Events section and window shop for something they might like, though it’s true that things will inevitably continue to fall through the cracks until a change is made to hopefully rectify that in 2027. Ironically, this change might have a bigger impact on developers than players, who may or may not even go searching for discounted games and aren’t necessarily upset if they missed one out of many opportunities to snag a game they want at a low price.

This change won’t be going into effect until early 2027, but Steam is preparing for this inevitability by promptly halting the scheduling of any curated Discounts & Events placements, meaning they cannot schedule anything within Weekend Deals, Midweek Deals, or Daily Deals while this scheduling method is being gradually phased out. That said, any that are currently scheduled will be honored.

For developers, an advantage here is that Steam “will have new and updated tools” to help manage what sales events they do have and participate in, with the idea ultimately being that they aren’t wasting away “trying to convince someone at Valve to feature their products.” No matter how this change is implemented, it will hopefully create a greater video game platform ecosystem for all parties involved.